Independent film

• 1. Edison Trust Origins

  ›

  In 1908, the Motion Picture Patents Company formed a cartel known as the Edison Trust. This organization held a monopoly on film production and distribution across the United States. Thomas Edison owned most of the major patents relating to motion pictures at that time. The trust included all the major film companies of the era such as Edison, Biograph, Vitagraph, Essanay, Selig, Lubin, Kalem, American Star, and American Pathé. George Kleine served as the leading distributor while Eastman Kodak supplied the raw film. A number of filmmakers declined or were refused membership to this powerful trust. These independent creators faced constant legal challenges from the MPPC. They received injunctions against their work and had to build their own cameras to survive. Many responded by moving their operations to Hollywood, California. The distance from Edison's home base in New Jersey made it more difficult for the MPPC to enforce its patents effectively. By 1912, the Supreme Court canceled the patent on raw film. A second decision in 1915 cancelled all MPPC patents. Though these rulings legalized independent film, they did little to remedy the de facto ban on small productions. Independent filmmakers who fled to Southern California during the enforcement period laid the groundwork for the studio system of classical Hollywood cinema.

• 2. Studio System Resistance

  ›

  On the 24th of May 1916, the Lincoln Motion Picture Company formed as the first movie studio owned and controlled by independent filmmakers. In 1919, four leading figures in American silent cinema created United Artists. Mary Pickford, Charles Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, and D.W. Griffith each held a 20% stake in the new venture. Lawyer William Gibbs McAdoo held the remaining 20%. The idea originated with Fairbanks, Chaplin, Pickford, and cowboy star William S. Hart while traveling around the U.S. selling Liberty bonds to help the World War I effort. Richard A. Rowland, head of Metro Pictures, reportedly observed that "The inmates are taking over the asylum" when he heard about their scheme. Hiram Abrams served as the first managing director. By 1924, Griffith had dropped out and the company faced a crisis. Joseph Schenck was hired as president and brought commitments for films starring his wife Norma Talmadge and sister-in-law Constance Talmadge. Contracts were signed with independent producers including Samuel Goldwyn, Howard Hughes, and later Alexander Korda. By the late 1940s, United Artists had virtually ceased to exist as either a producer or distributor. In 1941, Mary Pickford, Charles Chaplin, Walt Disney, Orson Welles, Samuel Goldwyn, David O. Selznick, Alexander Korda, and Walter Wanger founded the Society of Independent Motion Picture Producers. Later members included William Cagney, Sol Lesser, and Hal Roach. The SIMPP fought to end monopolistic practices by the five major Hollywood studios which controlled production, distribution, and exhibition. In 1942, the SIMPP filed an antitrust suit against Paramount's United Detroit Theatres. This complaint accused Paramount of conspiracy to control first-run and subsequent-run theaters in Detroit. It was the first antitrust suit brought by producers against exhibitors alleging monopoly and restraint of trade. In 1948, the United States Supreme Court issued the Paramount Decision ordering the Hollywood movie studios to sell their theater chains and eliminate certain anti-competitive practices.

• 3. Low Budget Renaissance

  ›

  Maya Deren created Meshes of the Afternoon in 1943 using inexpensive portable cameras during World War II. Kenneth Anger followed with Fireworks in 1947 while Morris Engel, Ruth Orkin, and Ray Abrashkin produced Little Fugitive in 1953. These films became critically acclaimed and highly influential works that utilized new technology to bypass traditional studio codes. Little Fugitive became the first independent film to be nominated for Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay at the American Academy Awards. It also received Silver Lion at Venice. Both Engel and Anger's films won acclaim overseas from the burgeoning French New Wave. Jean Cocteau invited Anger to study under him in Europe after praising Fireworks. François Truffaut cited Little Fugitive as an essential inspiration to his seminal work The 400 Blows. As the 1950s progressed, the new low-budget paradigm gained increased recognition internationally. Films such as Satyajit Ray's Apu Trilogy (1955, 1959) achieved critical acclaim abroad. Maya Deren joined a crowd of like-minded avant-garde filmmakers in New York who were interested in creating films as works of art rather than entertainment. They believed that "official cinema" was "running out of breath" and had become "morally corrupt, aesthetically obsolete, thematically superficial, [and] temperamentally boring." The Film-Makers' Cooperative formed in 1962 by Jonas Mekas, Stan Brakhage, Shirley Clarke, Gregory Markopoulos, and others provided an important outlet for many of cinema's creative luminaries in the 1960s. Jack Smith and Andy Warhol found distribution through this artist-run, non-profit organization. Ken Anguer debuted many of his most important works there when he returned to America. Mekas and Brakhage founded the Anthology Film Archives in 1970 which proved essential to the development and preservation of independent films.

• 4. New Hollywood Era

  ›

  Dennis Hopper made his writing and directing debut with Easy Rider in 1969 alongside producer/co-star/co-writer Peter Fonda. This film became one of the first completely independent films of New Hollywood. Easy Rider debuted at Cannes and garnered the First Film Award before receiving two Oscar nominations. One nomination was for best original screenplay while another recognized Corman-alum Jack Nicholson's breakthrough performance as George Hanson, an alcoholic lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union. United Artists revived Midnight Cowboy also released in 1969 which took numerous cues from Kenneth Anger and his influences in the French New Wave. It became the first and only X rated film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. The film featured cameo roles by many top Warhol superstars who had become symbols of the militantly anti-Hollywood climate of NYC's independent film community. Francis Ford Coppola made his debut in Spain at the Donostia-San Sebastian International Film Festival with The Rain People in 1969. He produced this film through his own company American Zoetrope. Though The Rain People was largely overlooked by American audiences, Zoetrope would become a powerful force in New Hollywood. Through Zoetrope, Coppola formed a distribution agreement with studio giant Warner Bros. which he exploited to achieve wide releases without making himself subject to their control. George Lucas made his feature film debut with THX 1138 in 1971, also released by Zoetrope through their deal with Warner Bros. By 1972, Coppola received oversight of Paramount's The Godfather while Lucas obtained studio funding for American Graffiti from Universal in 1973. Steven Spielberg's Jaws (1975) and George Lucas's Star Wars (1977) marked the beginning of the end for the New Hollywood movement. Their unprecedented box-office successes jump-started Hollywood's blockbuster mentality.

• 5. Sundance Movement Launch

  ›

  In 1978, Sterling Van Wagenen and Charles Gary Allison founded the Utah/US Film Festival with Chairperson Robert Redford. This veteran of New Hollywood starred in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid before taking on this role. At the time, the main focus of the event was to present retrospective films and filmmaker panel discussions. It also included a small program of new independent films. The jury of the 1978 festival was headed by Gary Allison and included Verna Fields, Linwood Gale Dunn, Katherine Ross, Charles E. Sellier Jr., Mark Rydell, and Anthea Sylbert. In 1981, United Artists ceased to exist as a venue for independent filmmakers after being bought out by MGM following the financial failure of Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate. That same year, Sterling Van Wagenen left the film festival to help found the Sundance Institute with Robert Redford. In 1985, the now well-established Sundance Institute took over management of the US Film Festival which was experiencing financial difficulties. Gary Beer and Sterling Van Wagenen spearheaded production of the inaugural Sundance Film Festival which included Program Director Tony Safford and Administrative Director Jenny Walz Selby. In 1991, the festival was officially renamed the Sundance Film Festival after Redford's famous role as The Sundance Kid. Through this festival the Independent Cinema movement launched successfully. Notable figures such as Kevin Smith, Robert Rodriguez, Quentin Tarantino, David O. Russell, Paul Thomas Anderson, Steven Soderbergh, James Wan, Hal Hartley, Joel and Ethan Coen, and Jim Jarmusch garnered resounding critical acclaim and unprecedented box office sales.

• 6. Corporate Co-optation

  ›

  Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles released in 1990 from New Line Cinema grossed over $100 million in the United States making it the most successful indie film in box-office history to that point. Miramax Films had a string of hits including Sex, Lies, and Videotape, My Left Foot, and Clerks putting them in the sights of big companies looking to cash in on independent studio success. In 1993, Disney bought Miramax for $60 million while Turner Broadcasting acquired New Line Cinema, Fine Line Features, and Castle Rock Entertainment in 1994 in a billion-dollar deal. These acquisitions proved effective as New Line released The Mask and Dumb & Dumber, Castle Rock released The Shawshank Redemption, and Miramax released Pulp Fiction all in 1994. By the early 2000s, Hollywood produced three different classes of films: big-budget blockbusters, art films and specialty films produced by conglomerate-owned indies, and genre and specialty films coming from true indie studios. The third category comprised over half the features released in the United States and usually cost between $5 and $10 million to produce. Budgets on major studio pictures averaged $100 million with approximately one-third spent on marketing due to large release campaigns. Another class included art films and niche-market fare controlled by conglomerates' indie subsidiaries where budgets averaged $40 million per release in the early 2000s. Films like these frequently cost less than $5 million with small marketing budgets that escalate if and when a particular film performs.

• 7. Digital Democratization

  ›

  The Blair Witch Project grossed over US$248.6 million while only spending US$60,000 demonstrating the power of new accessibility to filmmaking tools. In 2002, the cost of 35 mm film stock went up 23% according to Variety. The advent of consumer camcorders in 1985 and more importantly the arrival of digital video in the early 1990s lowered the technology barrier to movie production. The personal computer and non-linear editing system took away the use of editing stands such as the KEM dramatically reducing post-production costs. Technologies such as DVD, Blu-ray Disc and online video services simplified distribution. Video streaming services made it possible to distribute a digital version of a film to an entire country or even the world without involving shipping or warehousing of physical DVDs or film reels. Genghis Blues won that year's Sundance Film Festival Audience Award for a Documentary while being shot by the Belic brothers on two Hi8 consumer camcorders. In 2004 Panasonic released the DVX100 camcorder which featured film-like 24-frame per second shooting rate. This gave independent filmmakers the ability to shoot video at a frame rate considered standard for movies at the time. Several acclaimed films were made with this camera including Iraq in Fragments. By the second decade of the 21st century high-quality cellphone cameras allowed people to make edit and distribute films on a single inexpensive device. Crowdfunding services like Kickstarter, Pozible, and Tubestart helped people raise thousands of dollars enough to fund their own low-budget productions.